Every year, my family hard-boil eggs, and paint them with watercolours whilst they’re hot; it’s a Russian tradition. They’re rubbed with butter to make them shiny, and to preserve them for a few days. The eldest female gets to paint an all-red one, representing the Virgin Mary.

Then we have egg fights – highly formalised; the aggressor gets one blow with their egg onto the end of yours. If either egg cracks, it’s turned over; then the other person gets a turn. If both ends of your egg crack, you lose, but you get to eat it; if you have an uncracked end, or even two, you win, and you need a new opponent before lunch! The Virgin Mary is the last egg to be fought with.

Decorating techniques are often highly individual – personally, I like colour blocks and jagged lines, having the artistic ability of a dead duck; my father’s eggs were swirly purple abstract art, and my animation-trained elder daughter goes for realism. We did catch my younger daughter one year painting extra layers on the ends of hers, just to reinforce them; egg fighting is very competitive indeed, not for the faint-hearted!

Imagine my delight when I found this super article on egg painting through the ages – not only are there designs which I shall shamelessly nick on Sunday, but how fabulous to be taking part in a tradition dating back to the Paleolithic!